


Tracks in the Trail

by Odae



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Momo is in here, Park Ranger Zuko, Pro Athlete Sokka
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:27:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25403068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Odae/pseuds/Odae
Summary: "You know, you could take back the warning,” Sokka continued, starting to hand it back to Zuko. “This never happened, that kind of thing.” He gave Zuko a hopeful grin.Zuko’s expression hardened, now angry at the thought that he might have been duped. “No!” he barked.“Well, fine!” Sokka said, putting on his helmet and pulling his bike toward him by the handlebars again. “I’ll just go then.”“Yeah, do that,” Zuko replied hotly. He watched as Sokka started to rise onto his bike, and stepped forward to block the path. He pointed to the sign nearby on the trail that read, “Leave only footprints. Take only pictures.”“And off the bike,” Zuko almost growled.Zuko is the newest park ranger at the Hei Bai Nature Reserve. And Sokka is a pain in his ass.
Relationships: Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 309





	Tracks in the Trail

**Author's Note:**

> from the zukka discord and based off of [@s-sokka](https://s-sokka.tumblr.com/)'s work experience as a summer ranger! was on tumblr but figured I'd throw it up on here, too!

Zuko had finally reached week three of his tenure as a summer ranger. Only seven more weeks, and he would finally be able to leave behind the Hei Bai Nature Reserve and all of its crazy nature lovers. When his uncle Iroh practically forced him to take the position — explaining that if Zuko refused to work at the tea shop for the summer, he still had to work somewhere, and better yet if he could do it immersed in the meditative balm that was the outdoors — Zuko thought the worst he could encounter was the humming mosquitoes, and maybe the occasional murder hornet. But he was wrong. It was the people. 

There were the little kids who dropped their snack wrappers in the parking lot, and their parents who covered them in noxious insect repellants, and the teenagers who carved their initials into trees. But those weren’t even so bad, because after patiently explaining the downsides of littering, the park’s tiny visitors usually nodded solemnly and picked up their trash, and the fumes of such sprays usually dissipated quickly, and when they had the rules explained to them, the teenagers usually had the decency to be apologetic. 

The worst, by far, was a young man named Sokka. Zuko had seen him plenty of times before, visiting the park with his friends, back before Zuko had known his name. Sokka usually hung out with a young, bald man with tattoos, and two young women, one whose resemblance to Sokka revealed her to likely be his sister, and another one who berated him while holding his hand tightly as they entered the trail. Zuko had thought nothing of him at first as he seemed like just another avid hiker, but all that had changed on his fourth day as a ranger, when he had seen Sokka for the first time on his own. 

Zuko was doing his ranger thing, checking on the different trails in the couple of hours before the park’s closing, when a blue blur sped past him on a mountain bike. Zuko stared after the figure for a few seconds before coming to his senses and chasing after him. 

“Hey! You can’t ride that thing here!” 

The bike stopped ahead of him, and the figure hopped off and took off its helmet to reveal a wolftail and two bright blue eyes looking directly back at him. Zuko tried to ignore the heat building in his face as he finally got to see Sokka’s perfect features and defined muscles up close. 

“Hey, sorry, man, but the terrain’s just perfect for my practice,” Sokka explained, tossing his helmet on the handlebars.

“There are bike paths for a reason,” Zuko said coolly. He reached into the pocket of his cargo shorts and pulled out a pad of paper. “I have to issue you a warning.”

“What?” Sokka said, pulling on his handlebars. “I’ll just go.”

Zuko exhaled in frustration as he scribbled on the pad. “It’s just policy, okay? I don’t want to do it, but I have to. What’s your name?”

At this question, a smug grin filled Sokka’s lips, and he shrugged. “The name’s Sokka,” he said. He waited expectantly for Zuko’s reaction.

Zuko stared at Sokka staring at him. “Okay.” He glanced down at the paper in his hands as he wrote it out, and then looked up to find Sokka still grinning at him expectantly. “Uh, sorry, was I supposed to know that?” He watched as Sokka’s face fell. “Do you work here, too, or something?” he asked in a panic. “Look, it’s only my first week, and I —”

“It’s not that, it’s just—” Sokka sighed and looked up at him despondently. Zuko thought there might even have been a tear in his right eye. “Do you really not know who I am?”

“I—no? Are you famous or something?”

“The pro-biker! Sokka! I won the Omashu tour!”

Zuko turned sheepish as he ripped the paper out of the pad and held it out to Sokka. “Oh, um, sorry. I don’t really follow sports.”

Sokka turned even sadder as he took the paper from Zuko. “That’s okay...Zuko?” he asked, reading his name off of the paper.

Zuko nodded, feeling vaguely regretful for some reason. Sokka smiled sadly back at him.

“Maybe to make it up to me, though,” Sokka said, waving the warning in the air. “We could forget about all of this?” 

“What?” Zuko asked.

“You know, you could take back the warning,” Sokka continued, starting to hand it back to Zuko. “This never happened, that kind of thing.” He gave Zuko a hopeful grin.

Zuko’s expression hardened, now angry at the thought that he might have been duped. “No!” he barked. 

“Well, fine!” Sokka said, putting on his helmet and pulling his bike toward him by the handlebars again. “I’ll just go then.”

“Yeah, do that,” Zuko replied hotly. He watched as Sokka started to rise onto his bike, and stepped forward to block the path. He pointed to the sign nearby on the trail that read, “Leave only footprints. Take only pictures.” 

“And off the bike,” Zuko almost growled. 

“Fine, jeez,” Sokka said, hopping off once more. He began walking down the path in the opposite direction, away from Zuko, and stuck his tongue out at him. 

As Sokka pushed his bike away, and Zuko continued down the trail, he thought he might never see the other man again in his life. He sighed at the tire tracks in the wet earth of the trail. Never having to deal with them again left him greatly relieved. But, he had to admit, the sight of Sokka’s sad, blue eyes had left a series of knots in his stomach that would take a while to untangle. 

Then the next day came, and the appearance of Sokka nonchalantly fishing off the boat launch quickly proved Zuko wrong. As did every day afterward, as Sokka made appearance after appearance at the park, breaking nearly every rule there was in the park ranger handbook. Zuko turned corners on trails to find Sokka hand-feeding squirrels—“Snack for you, too,  _ jerk _ ?” Sokka would ask, while Zuko would point to another sign instructing hikers not to feed wildlife—or sat in the booth checking in visitors only to suddenly spy Sokka walking toward him with bunches of wildflowers in his hand—“For you, Zuko, even though you wanted to get me in trouble,” said Sokka, brandishing the bouquet in front of him, and Zuko answered, “You’re not supposed to  _ pick _ the flowers, Sokka, just look at them,” and then took them and put them in a vase because he wasn’t about to waste them—and the number of warnings Zuko had had to issue Sokka in just a week and a half was unprecedented. 

“Is there a limit to these? I mean, is there a point where he gets kicked out?” Zuko had to ask Jeong Jeong, his supervisor, in the middle of his second week.

“I don’t know,” Jeong Jeong replied, in awe at the number of carbon copies of warnings Zuko had dropped on his desk. “We have never had to issue more than one to any individual visitor.” He picked up one for attempted overnight camping without a permit. “Have you spoken to him about the negative consequences of his actions?”

“Of course I talked to him,” Zuko replied loudly, clearly offended.

“Then try talking to him again!” Jeong Jeong practically roared.

Zuko started hiding the warnings.

But Zuko did talk to Sokka, and often. The time Sokka came to the trail with a lemur on his shoulder, and Zuko insisted the animal had to be on a leash to go on the trail—“He’s not a  _ pet _ , he’s my friend, and he wants to take a walk!” Sokka replied indignantly—they settled for sitting in the booth and tossing nuts in the air for Momo to catch. Sokka almost got away without a warning that day, but when he laughed at Momo’s flying leap for a macadamia and said, “Hey, he likes them even more than the squirrels do,” Zuko had to write another one out. From the smile on Sokka’s face, though, it looked like he understood it as a joke.

Now he was on week three, though, and Zuko had a brand-new pen and pad for warnings, and the tire tracks on the trail had finally been washed away with a passing storm. He felt he could take anything Sokka threw at him this week, maybe even without shaky hands and the feeling that his heart was jumping into his throat each time he approached the other man.

Static sounded from Zuko’s walkie-talkie, and Zuko brought it to his good ear in time to hear someone on the other end.

“Hey, uh, I got a kid who fell out of a tree over here somewhere,” the ranger on the trail said haltingly.

Zuko pressed the transmit button and brought the walkie-talkie to his mouth. “Copy, this is Zuko from the central booth. What trail? Over.”

“Oh, hey, Zuko! It’s me, Chey,” came the response.

Zuko sighed before pressing the button again. “Chey, about the guy who fell out of the tree: what trail? Do we need an ambulance? Over.” 

There was a long line of static before Chey’s voice came back. “I don’t think so,” he said slowly. “I mean, the guy said no, and he looks pretty all right to me. He’s asking for you to come get him.” The static returned once more before clearing abruptly. “Oh, and he says his name is Sokka. Do you two know each other?”

Zuko set down the walkie-talkie and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Copy,” he finally said when he picked the walkie-talkie back up, “I’ll go for him, and you come back and man the booth. And Chey?” 

“Yeah?”

“For the last time, what trail?”

Zuko found himself running down the Panda Lily trail, the first aid kit bouncing at his side as he nearly tripped over the laces of his hiking boots and barely avoided the mud puddles that threatened to suck him in. He passed so many trees, from rhododendron trees to birches and redwoods and everything in between, but none of them had dropped Sokka from their branches, so Zuko kept going. He reached a fork in the trail and stopped abruptly at the tree between the diverting roads, and scanned it for any signs. There were none. He stepped back. 

“Sokka?” he yelled, his voice hoarse as he cupped his mouth with his hands. “Sokka, where are you?”

A beat passed, and then, from far away, he heard, “Zuko!”

Zuko took off down the road on the right, and finally, he spotted Sokka in the distance, leaning against the trunk of a banyan tree. His right leg was bent, and he leaned on it with his elbow, but the other was out in front of him at an odd angle, seemingly useless. He greeted Zuko with a strained grin.

“My knight in shining armor,” said Sokka.

“Ugh, I definitely should have called an ambulance,” Zuko replied. He knelt down gingerly next to Sokka and laid out the first aid kit. 

“Nah,” Sokka said with a shrug, his hand out in a dismissive gesture, “this is nothing.”

Zuko stared at Sokka with a rigid expression on his face, his mouth a tight line.

“Really!” Sokka insisted. “It’s just a sprain. I hurt it a couple months ago, and I’ve been recovering, but I aggravated it.”

“So that’s how you have all this time to bother me,” Zuko said, gingerly pulling Sokka’s leg straight in front of him. “You’ve been recovering.”

“Well,” Sokka said sheepishly, “I technically do still have practices I should be going to. But it’s more fun to come here and see you.”

Zuko looked up at him sharply, his cheeks flushed, and accidentally jostled Sokka’s leg. Sokka hissed sharply, and Zuko blanched and moved quickly to grab the first aid kit.

“Sorry,” he said quietly.

“S’okay,” Sokka replied, watching his hands unravel a bandage. “It’s my fault for getting hurt in the first place.”

Zuko laughed, low and a little husky. “Yeah, it kind of is.” 

He wrapped the bandage around Sokka’s knee tightly, watching his expression for more pain. Sokka stayed relatively placid, only wincing once, and his mouth usually quirked up in a crooked smile. 

“Why would you climb a tree?” Zuko asked after a while. “That’s like rule number three on the trailhead sign.”

“What can I say?” Sokka said cavalierly. “I’m a rebel.”

Zuko let out a quick, disbelieving laugh. “Right.”

“Hey, you said it yourself! I break all the rules.”

“Yeah,” Zuko said, pinning the bandage in place, “and it’d be great if you stopped. Even my boss has no idea what to do with all of the warnings I’ve been giving you.”

Sokka considered him for a moment. “I’ll stop if you agree to go out with me,” he finally said. 

Zuko dropped a hand to the leaf-littered ground to keep himself from falling over. “What?”

“The tree-climbing? The rule-breaking? I’ve been trying to get your attention this  _ whole  _ time,” Sokka said with a widening grin. 

“ _ My _ attention?” Zuko asked. His brow furrowed in confusion. “Why?”

“Because I like you,” Sokka replied matter-of-factly.

Zuko shook his head. “But what about the bike thing?” he almost demanded. “You couldn’t have liked me then.”

Sokka tilted his head thoughtfully, bringing one of his hands up to brush his chin. “I will admit,” he said, “although I thought you were attractive, I didn’t like you during the bike thing. But I grew to like you over time.” 

“Over time?” Zuko repeated, crossing his arms.

“C’mon,” Sokka said, poking him on the arm. “Don’t you like me, too?”

Zuko dropped his arms and looked back at the muddy trail. “Yeah, I do.”

Sokka smiled at him hopefully, “So go out with me?” 

Zuko looked back at him, now smiling lightly. “Or else?”

“Or else I’m going to keep climbing the trees.”

“And?”

“Fishing off the boat launch.”

Zuko sighed. “And I can’t trust you to stop there, can I?”

Sokka grinned. “The squirrels aren’t going to feed themselves.”

“Actually, they are, that’s why —” Zuko stopped and sighed. “Okay, yes, I’ll go out with you.”

“Really?” Sokka practically squealed. 

“Yeah,” Zuko said, smiling back at him. 

Sokka practically lunged toward Zuko, reaching for his face, but managed to jam his leg into Zuko’s all over again. All at once, his eyes shot wide open, and his head fell back, and Zuko had to catch his arm to keep him from falling over, a low moan of pain twisting from his mouth.

“Sokka!”

“Yep, definitely just a sprain,” Sokka said once he had come back around. He gritted his teeth. “Barely hurts at all.”

Zuko rolled his eyes. “We need to get you to the booth,” he said, reaching for Sokka’s other hand as he pulled his arm over his shoulders to help him up. 

“But you promised you’d go out with me,” Sokka whined.

A small smile brightened Zuko’s face, and a new joy glowed from his eyes. “Yeah, I will,” he said, and before Sokka could make some smart-aleck reply, Zuko leaned toward him, tilting his head slightly at the odd angle from being side-by-side, and kissed Sokka. Even with his injured leg, Sokka came to life beneath him, raising his free hand to cup Zuko’s jaw and brush back the hair falling into his face with his fingers. Birds sang from the tree canopy above them, the leaves shuffled quietly in the shifting wind, and the warmth of dappled sunlight fell across their entangled bodies. If Zuko had not been bearing half the weight of a very heavy and very injured young man, it might have been a perfect kiss. Or maybe that was what made it one.

“All right,” Zuko said when they finally pulled apart. “We should really go.”

“Where are we going again?” Sokka asked, now dazed.

“To the booth.” Zuko helped Sokka hop along beside him. 

Sokka nodded, trying desperately to keep his weight on his uninjured leg. “And then we can go out?”

Zuko smiled, and looked further down the trail. “Yeah, then we can go out.”


End file.
